I've reviewed all the responses to my post, and it's been quite illuminating. As a scientist, I'm used to examining my assumptions and checking for rationalizations and such, and it was quite interesting to sort out the chaff from the wheat.
In the manner of crowd-sourcing the answer to a problem, I've discovered the following are true:
1) No one knows the truth about anything in economics.
There is no general consensus as to whether inflation is good or bad, although standard economic theory states that it is good.
The simple fact that there is dissent, some of which is studied and eloquent (per references people have made to other schools of thought) indicates that the matter isn't settled. If it were, there would be a compelling logical argument which would not require rationalization. And there would be general consensus, as there is on, for example, plate tectonics.
2) Actual economists make predictions based on assumptions which never change.
A good example is the "get a house loan for $300,000 and if the dollar deflates you may never be able to pay back the loan".
This assumes that debt is based on currency instead of wealth. I could instead get a house loan for the purchase price of 1,000 refrigerators (chosen at the time of purchase), and then when the dollar deflates the price of refrigerators goes down. Once I've repaid enough money to purchase the refrigerators, at whatever their current price is, the loan is repaid.
If you separate debt from currency, you can use wealth as a measure of value and then currency is used for exchange, which is how it should be. Refrigerators are an inconvenient measure, of course, but I can imagine a "global average purchasing value of the dollar" which is calculated by taking everything into account and which adjusts the loan amount accordingly.
3) The results just don't make sense
Why is "a little" inflation good when "a lot" of inflation is bad? How is the cutoff point calculated? Is the formula flat (any inflation in this range is OK) or peaked (inflation has to be finely tuned to this specific value)?
There is no functional definition for "good" inflation versus "bad" inflation. Economists only make soft, hand-waving appeals to rationalizations: "if inflation were high, people would do *this*, and it would cause *that*, and the results would be bad".
Let's see, what's the term I'm looking for... oh yeah. It's sophistry.
3) From my own studies, economics has some major flaws in logic
One such flaw is the application of "small signal analysis" to non-linear functions. Double your sales outlets and you double your sales: simple and accurate at the small scale, and it assumes a potential ocean of market. Sell through Wal-Mart, however, and you're done. Wal-Mart is the entire ocean, and a lot of companies were caught unawares by this - Levi and Vlasic to take two examples.
Another one: outsourcing is good because it lowers costs overall. It assumes an ocean of employment opportunities.
The only point remaining that no one effectively disputes is the corruption in the system. The financial system (including governments) is screwing people over, essentially robbing wealth from the masses and concentrating it in the elite few.
So I guess that makes my decision for me.
Bitcoin will be better, because it eliminates a large slice of corruption present in the system. It may not be perfect, but it will be a major improvement over the system we currently have.
As I understand it, inflation is when the government prints more money than the value of goods and services produced.
So for example, in a static economy with fixed production, the government prints 5% more currency per year and spends it, so that inflation is 5% and the value of peoples' money gradually diminishes. (The for-real economy grows with increases in efficiency of production etc, and money wears out and needs to be replaced, but the principle is the same.)
This is a hidden tax on money. It devalues savings, and encourages people to spend and invest rather than save.
It occurs to me that bitcoins can't be abused in this way. It's impossible for a government to blithely print money except by mining, for which there are diminishing returns.
Take away the governments ability to raise revenue by inflating the currency, and you take away a large portion of their income and some of their influence over the economy.
Hmmm... I wonder what will happen when governments eventually figure this out?
If you look at people from almost any perspective, you get a bell curve.
If you separate people into male/female, you get 2 bell curves... but are they the same?
It turns out that the bell curve for women is, comparatively speaking, tall and narrow, while for men it's more squat and spread out.
This means that there is less variation in women than there is for men. There are more women are average height (for women) than there are men of average height (for men). More women of average intelligence than men, and so on.
This also means that there is more variation in men than there is in women. More men are at the upper end of the curve than women, **but at the same time** there are more men on the lower tail than there are women. More men have the highest level of income than women, but at the same time more men are homeless than women.
This is a reflection of basic biology. Because women bear the biological expense of childbirth, they tend to be conservative and take fewer chances. Because men have to compete for women, they tend to take chances in an attempt to succeed.
This is reflected in the bell curves - women have less variation than men. This is why more boys are born than girls - more boys die because they tend to take chances growing up.
So if success in business requires risk, it's no surprise that there are more men than women. It doesn't mean that men are in general better businessmen, because at the same time more men are unsuccessful at business too.
Prejudice against women shouldn't be allowed, of course, but thinking that women are equivalent to men in abilities or temperament and legislating around it is a losing proposition.
Women are equal to men in the eyes of the law. Women can be firefighters so long as they can beat other candidates (both men and women) in the physical endurance trials.
The world does not have one culture. Many do not have the same goals or motivations as yours, some have a different culture, religion, history, sense of self, pride and worth from what you experience in your circles.
I understand how one comes to love one's own culture. It's obvious, really: you make certain choices and it suits you well, the natural conclusion is that if everyone made those choices, they would do as well.
This is wrong, and you should learn to identify the ways in which it is wrong. Hasidic Jews do not try to force their ideas on everyone else, we generally don't allow White Supremacists to force their views on everyone else, and we try not to allow other cultures to terrorize us into following their views.
We are not breaking the law, we are quite happy doing what we do, and we don't need to be forced into things "for our own betterment". You needn't concern yourself about our welfare.
At all.
Feel free to convince everyone in your circle of friends, associates, or community to chip, but please don't try to force your views on everyone, who may have a different opinion.
1) DEA installs license plate scanners. 2) Police stop vehicles which fit the profile of drug smuggling. 3) Years pass. Many, many innocent people's rights are violated 4) Police find drugs in some stopped car, arrests are made. 5) Plaintiffs complain that police had no right to stop car based on profile 6) ACLU gets involved. Appeal goes to federal court. 7) Federal court overturns conviction on grounds that there was no probable cause (or not - this is Utah, after all) 8) Case is presented to supreme court. Supreme court upholds 4th amendment, license scanning is not probable cause.
End result: Many innocent people have their rights violated, some arrests are made. About a million dollars are spent on one case to bring it to the supreme court, ten years of some person's life is lost fighting it, and eventually the DEA is told to stop. During this time, drug smuggling is reduced by less than one part in a million. Millions of dollars spent on the system are wasted when the system is dismantled.
For once, can we please just cut to the chase? Just stop these idiots from the beginning and a whole lot of people will save a whole lot of effort, money, time, and grief.
Perl's strength is that it's expressive. It's not a language which is easy to learn or which generates heavily optimized code.
In the demo phase, you're not really worried about performance. The goal is to have something showing as quickly as possible, and not worry too much about how fast it runs, or how much memory it takes. Overspec your demo system for the time being (ie - make it really fast and install lots of memory), and once you have a reasonable interface go back and recode it in a simpler language which can be more easily optimized.
Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive. You end up wasting tons of time debugging issues of memory allocation, library interface details, and datatype conversion.
Languages which are expressive are a little harder to learn, but any individual line in the expressive language does a lot more. Since you are writing fewer lines, and since the fewer lines do more, you end up making programs more easily and in less time.
Yes, the programs will execute a little slower, but as mentioned, this is not important in the demo stage. Your productivity will be much higher.
And there are lots of places where performance simply doesn't matter. Scripts usually fall into this category.
Perl was written by a linguist, not an engineer. As such, it's harder to learn (it's got tons more keywords and context), but once you get the hang of it it's much more expressive. The following single line:
unfolds into several lines of C++, plus a subroutine definition with datatype definitions. The following line:
@Files = <c:/Windows/*.exe>;
can be implemented using one of over a dozen possible library calls in C++, but is builtin in perl. You don't have to look up the library call interface specific to your system.
The University of California has submitted a formal letter objecting to the bill, estimating that the measure could increase administrative costs by up to $594,000 annually — money which would come out of the cash-strapped state's General Fund.
So, to paraphrase: "Let's not protect peoples' rights! It will cost us money! And it will come out of the general fund! WAAAAAAH"
Gimme a break. California will *always* want more money, will always be strapped for cash, and sacrificing morality for expediency is an argument that could be used to avoid all responsibility and fairness.
Balance your budget, reduce your spending, and grow some backbone. Let your people live in privacy and safety.
One aspect of driverless cars that people haven't generally noticed is that the cars don't actually need *people*. This is huge.
Your car could take the kids to soccer practice, and pick them up afterwards. It could go out for an oil change while you're at work.
One idea that I like a lot is sending your car out to get groceries. Order online, and when the order is ready the car drives to the shipping station and helpful baggers (human or robot) place your order into the car, which then drives home.
This would be wildly productive for society. You wouldn't have to spend time shopping or traveling to and from the supermarket, and the supermarket wouldn't need a massive display space within easy drive of the city. The groceries "terminal" could be something more akin to a UPS shipping space.
Other useful increases in productivity are: driverless semi trucks which operate continuously (no need to stop and rest every 8 hours of driving), driverless delivery vans (UPS, USPS, &c), driverless delivery of parts to automotive repair shops and so on.
If a neighborhood could coordinate on times, several families could send a single car to pick up everyone's shopping.
Overall, driverless cars should result in an enormous quantum leap in efficiency, productivity, as well as safety.
Most of the online courses fall short on the psychological aspects of teaching. They are little more than videotaped lectures with automated homework grading, and this model doesn't translate well to an online model.
By way of example, the online courses offered so far have been based on avoiding penalties instead of gathering rewards. Your grade is 100 minus the things you get wrong, and you have to finish before a deadline or get penalized.
This is reflected in the enrollment numbers: 120K students enroll in an online course thinking that MIT (for example) will provide a rewarding experience. 100K drop out because the experience isn't all that great.
Taken another way, consider a student who has trouble in the first half of the course and who gets a poor grade on the midterm. At that point, the maximum grade they can get is very low, so there's really no incentive to continue.
A different model might hold the student back until they show proficiency. Once they have confidence in the material, the system "rewards" them and presents the next chapter. The student is motivated to get the next level of achievement, and their level of understanding is greater.
All of the motivation in all of these courses comes from the student, and with no rewards along the way it turns into a grueling tedious chore. It's tough to keep slogging away for 12 weeks with only the dream of a certificate to keep you going.
If they really want to educate people, they're going to have to change their model to keep students motivated.
Until they do that, it'll still be just videotapes of college lectures.
Something that's escaped all of the online courses is learning through gamification.
In real life, learning is growth - we learn something, it's useful, then we incrementally learn something more useful. There's a reward at every stage.
In online courses, there is no reward - instead of pursuit of goals it's a continuous escape from penalties. It's the exact opposite of what makes a game fun. The MITx "Circuits and Electronics" course is exactly this way: it's a continuous stick instead of a carrot. Get the homework done before the time limit.
Video games are typically a series of tedious, repetitive tasks. They're also structured to give the player a reward for progression - and as a consequence, the player has fun (Everquest comes to mind). Slot machines are the same way: tedious repetitive actions which have no benefit to the player whatsoever - except that the tasp one gets from hitting a minor jackpot is enjoyable enough to be worth the cost.
I would happily pay $100 for an online course structured as a game, something which would teach me something. For example, the "Circuits and Electronics" course could be structured as a bank account (a game score) in which the "player" (student) could accrue money by completing assignments presented by the system. Accrue enough money and the system would unlock the next level of study materials - proceed to the next chapter.
Add some color and the entire journey would be pleasant and rewarding.
Example: A mad scientist wants to get his lightning-moat working, and he believes there's a problem in *this* circuit (shown) where the designer got the transconductance calculation wrong. He offers $20 Mechanicsburg dollars for the right answer. You need $70 more to gain the title "advanced minion".
Invariably the person will not have solved the problem themselves - they're simply repeating an interesting problem that they read about some time in the past. Oftentimes they read that it makes for a good interview question.
You handle this by exclaiming "you like puzzles? That's great! I love puzzles too, here's one for you..." and then give the simplest, least obvious, most vexing conundrum you have. Look this up ahead of time so you have one ready to use.
Let them sputter and hem and haw for a minute, then give them another one. "Or how about this one - it's one of my favourites!"
Depending on how trashed you think the interview is (from when the manager burst in the first time), you can turn the screws a little. If you're not getting the job anyway, you can reverse it so that it seems like you don't *want* the job because no one else in the company can pass *your* puzzle requirements. "Oh, I thought you had a lot of bright, motivated, self-starting individuals. That's what the job requirements said you wanted...".
No interviewing manager has ever had the guts to refuse my puzzle after asking their pet puzzle question, and I have yet to find one who was any good at puzzles.
Some depressions can be cured immediately and permanently.
Some depression is the result of lack of vitamin D3. Spend most of your time indoors, never go out in the sunshine between 10 AM and 2 PM (the only time when you get vitamin D from sunlight), cover most of your body when you *are* out, and slather your skin with sunscreen at the beach. Oh, and the RDA was set abnormally low when it was first set. Take 8,000 IU of D3 for a week and see if you get better. You can say that it's the dead-end job, more likely it's the job keeping you indoors.
Some depression is the result of lack of iodine. Iodine is almost absent from the modern diet. Salt used in commercial products has none (iodized costs more), and bread whiteners which used to be Iodine are now mostly Bromine. The Japanese get lots of iodine in their diet and have much less incidence of depression. Take some Kelp pills for a week and see if you get better. Or, you can go to a professional and learn to manage the symptoms.
Some depression is the result of lack of Thyroid activity. No one knows what causes this (at the moment), but by some accounts 40% of depression can be cured by taking thyroid supplements. This has to be done with a doctor and lab tests, but thyroid extracts are available over the counter and could be taken for a week - see if it makes you feel better. Or, you can try the prescription "we've got it this time for sure!" antidepressant medicine that's in vogue this year.
Some depression is caused by lack of sleep, which is itself caused by allergies. Get a Xylitol nasal spray and use it every 10 minutes for an hour, or until your sinuses are clear, and see if this helps. Or change your mattress if you're waking up sore or with back pain. Or otherwise change your sleeping arrangements to maximize your rest.
Each of these is cheap and could be considered a $20 experiment - if it works, great! If it doesn't, you're out $20 so no big deal.
The "like a virus remains in your body" is fatalistic reasoning - it's an excuse to give up looking.
Another possible explanation is that Depression is a resource depletion disease, which can be cured by building up stores of that resource.
Nota Bene: There is more than one type of depression. There is more than one cause of depression.
By propping up existing companies. governments have been investing in stagnation for the last 20 years. It's reached the point where it's very difficult to start a new company.
Jobs aren't created by existing companies, jobs are created by starting new companies and by small companies growing large.
Yes, GE and Amazon have been job creators, but that was then. Once companies have enough employees to get their job done, hiring essentially stops. Workforce numbers among established companies is, to a large extent, static.
Jobs are created by starting new companies - but how can anyone compete? It's impossible to make a product that competes with a GE product. Even if the new product is better, GE has a lower margin because it pays no taxes.
IP laws (patent issues), intrusive useless regulations, intrusive tax accounting, ambiguous laws with discretionary enforcement set the barrier to entry for starting a business today very high.
A vibrant, healthy economy has lots of churn. Businesses need to adapt or die, and propping up businesses just because they are "established" runs counter to that goal.
It's no wonder that the economy hasn't recovered in 3 years - we don't allow it to change.
I once did a Google image search on the most common 1000 words in English and noted the index of the first porn image in that list.
I was interested to see if there was a way to measure how far any word would have to be taken to indicate porn. For example, I would expect "car" to be distant from porn, but "head" to be fairly close.
To my surprise, using Google images as a metric indicated that all common English words were within 15 images of porn.
This was before they switched to the Javascript image results page, and they may have cleaned up their act a bit, but the results were inescapable - much of the net is centered around porn.
1) The videos are "after the break". I can scan the text description and move on if I'm not interested. No space is wasted on the front page.
2) The text descriptions refer to the videos, usually with the phrase "in the video after the break", which actually draws me in. I like to see things in action, it gives me a better sense of context and how things work together.
4) The videos are for action. Look into movie-making and try to avoid common pitfalls - one of which is putting static information in a video medium. Showing a person talking or expressing an opinion, showing text (especially with the narrator reading the text), or static diagrams with numbers is the wrong use of the media. Video is for action.
(In the case of movie making, the rule is "the actors should *show* the plot, not *explain* the plot".)
Yes, many TED talks are of people talking. These are performances which are action-based, so video is the right medium. Most people aren't public speakers, so they don't have a performance. Video is not a good medium for talking unless it's backed by action.
5) On Hackaday, people complain when the videos show static information. (Usually images of the build process, or overly-dramatic artistic buildups.) Keep the videos short, to the point, and focus on the happenings.
Hackaday is a tech-oriented site which includes videos in many of it's posts. In general, their videos are informative and on-point. They make the browsing experience better.
Let's compare and contrast those videos with the ones here, and see if slashdot can keep the good parts and ditch the bad parts.
Hackaday videos are generated by the people making the articles. IOW, when they make some cool gadget, they have a website describing the build and a video of the device in action. Here's the first example that I could find in a quick search. Lots and lots of other examples.
The subject matter of the cited example is rather uninteresting and techy, and it's amateurish, but the video does an excellent job of counterpointing and illustrating the text of the build.
I've seen other examples where the ideas expressed in the text are badly described or difficult to grasp, but the video makes it clear. There are also many examples of things which are just plain cool when shown as video. Lots and lots of examples.
Images are used to illuminate and express the interest and wonder of a concept, and videos should be used in the same way. Not as a medium in and of itself, but as a way to express those aspects which don't come out well in text or images.
Using them for fake advertizements is the wrong approach - there is simply no general interest in seeing advertizements, and making them into videos doesn't make them more palatable. Having a video of a person talking, expressing an opinion, or describing something is completely backwards - the description should be text, the diagrams in images, and the action in video.
If you had videos in the same vein and for the same reasons as Hackaday, it would be roundly appreciated by just about everyone.
It's like what everyone says is the problem with the RIAA and MPAA - change your business model, give the customers what they want.
Everyone post their negative experiences with the company, in gory detail.
Even if you've never used the product, some well-placed negative innuendo or skeptical comparison (use this open source alternative instead!) will serve to disadvertize the product.
After awhile, a short while (I'm hoping), the editors will realize that the readers don't want this, the sponsors will realize that they don't want this, and the practice will stop.
People keep moaning about apathy in the face of an unlikeable situation, well here's our chance. Let's change the system.
The theory is that teachers would assign more writing if they didn't have to read it.
Hey, here's an idea - instead of implementing someone's pet theory-of-the-month, how about we attempt to prove the theory first?
The field of Education is rife with theories - the biggest and worst that comes to mind is the "new math" a few years back. It seems every year or so someone notices that education is failing, comes up with the reason, and a new method of teaching kids "more better" is born.
Why do we let educational institutions try unproven techniques on our children? Techniques that might damage their education and screw them over for the rest of their lives? Isn't unproven teaching techniques as dangerous as unproven medicines?
How about we test these theories before foisting them on our children?
IIRC, Heim theory proposes a type of antigravity effect based on magnetic interactions.
The effect is difficult to test on Earth, because the effect is smaller the closer you get to a gravitational body. I seem to recall an experiment on Earth would require something like 14T to produce a measurable effect.
Maybe we could set up the Heim propulsion using this system and definitively decide whether Heim was correct?
Ah - here is the link. The paper tosses out values of 25T and 60T as needed to do interesting things.
Get a cheap timer (cooking timer, tea timer, or similar), and set it for 2 hours.
Every 2 hours when the alarm goes off, get up and stretch. Be sure to stretch all parts of your body - legs, torso, arms, and neck.
Then do something short which is pleasant and provides a bit of exercise - walk around the block, jog a half mile on the treadmill, juggle or practice scales on an instrument for 5 minutes.
Doing this will greatly improve your productivity, health, and mood.
Slashdot Mirror
When a dinosaur dies, it's tail thrashes around a lot, and does a lot of damage
That statement got me really curious.
Apropos of nothing, just how is it that you come to know what happens when a dinosaur dies?
I've reviewed all the responses to my post, and it's been quite illuminating. As a scientist, I'm used to examining my assumptions and checking for rationalizations and such, and it was quite interesting to sort out the chaff from the wheat.
In the manner of crowd-sourcing the answer to a problem, I've discovered the following are true:
1) No one knows the truth about anything in economics.
There is no general consensus as to whether inflation is good or bad, although standard economic theory states that it is good.
The simple fact that there is dissent, some of which is studied and eloquent (per references people have made to other schools of thought) indicates that the matter isn't settled. If it were, there would be a compelling logical argument which would not require rationalization. And there would be general consensus, as there is on, for example, plate tectonics.
2) Actual economists make predictions based on assumptions which never change.
A good example is the "get a house loan for $300,000 and if the dollar deflates you may never be able to pay back the loan".
This assumes that debt is based on currency instead of wealth. I could instead get a house loan for the purchase price of 1,000 refrigerators (chosen at the time of purchase), and then when the dollar deflates the price of refrigerators goes down. Once I've repaid enough money to purchase the refrigerators, at whatever their current price is, the loan is repaid.
If you separate debt from currency, you can use wealth as a measure of value and then currency is used for exchange, which is how it should be. Refrigerators are an inconvenient measure, of course, but I can imagine a "global average purchasing value of the dollar" which is calculated by taking everything into account and which adjusts the loan amount accordingly.
3) The results just don't make sense
Why is "a little" inflation good when "a lot" of inflation is bad? How is the cutoff point calculated? Is the formula flat (any inflation in this range is OK) or peaked (inflation has to be finely tuned to this specific value)?
There is no functional definition for "good" inflation versus "bad" inflation. Economists only make soft, hand-waving appeals to rationalizations: "if inflation were high, people would do *this*, and it would cause *that*, and the results would be bad".
Let's see, what's the term I'm looking for... oh yeah. It's sophistry.
3) From my own studies, economics has some major flaws in logic
One such flaw is the application of "small signal analysis" to non-linear functions. Double your sales outlets and you double your sales: simple and accurate at the small scale, and it assumes a potential ocean of market. Sell through Wal-Mart, however, and you're done. Wal-Mart is the entire ocean, and a lot of companies were caught unawares by this - Levi and Vlasic to take two examples.
Another one: outsourcing is good because it lowers costs overall. It assumes an ocean of employment opportunities.
The only point remaining that no one effectively disputes is the corruption in the system. The financial system (including governments) is screwing people over, essentially robbing wealth from the masses and concentrating it in the elite few.
So I guess that makes my decision for me.
Bitcoin will be better, because it eliminates a large slice of corruption present in the system. It may not be perfect, but it will be a major improvement over the system we currently have.
As I understand it, inflation is when the government prints more money than the value of goods and services produced.
So for example, in a static economy with fixed production, the government prints 5% more currency per year and spends it, so that inflation is 5% and the value of peoples' money gradually diminishes. (The for-real economy grows with increases in efficiency of production etc, and money wears out and needs to be replaced, but the principle is the same.)
This is a hidden tax on money. It devalues savings, and encourages people to spend and invest rather than save.
It occurs to me that bitcoins can't be abused in this way. It's impossible for a government to blithely print money except by mining, for which there are diminishing returns.
Take away the governments ability to raise revenue by inflating the currency, and you take away a large portion of their income and some of their influence over the economy.
Hmmm... I wonder what will happen when governments eventually figure this out?
If you look at people from almost any perspective, you get a bell curve.
If you separate people into male/female, you get 2 bell curves... but are they the same?
It turns out that the bell curve for women is, comparatively speaking, tall and narrow, while for men it's more squat and spread out.
This means that there is less variation in women than there is for men. There are more women are average height (for women) than there are men of average height (for men). More women of average intelligence than men, and so on.
This also means that there is more variation in men than there is in women. More men are at the upper end of the curve than women, **but at the same time** there are more men on the lower tail than there are women. More men have the highest level of income than women, but at the same time more men are homeless than women.
This is a reflection of basic biology. Because women bear the biological expense of childbirth, they tend to be conservative and take fewer chances. Because men have to compete for women, they tend to take chances in an attempt to succeed.
This is reflected in the bell curves - women have less variation than men. This is why more boys are born than girls - more boys die because they tend to take chances growing up.
So if success in business requires risk, it's no surprise that there are more men than women. It doesn't mean that men are in general better businessmen, because at the same time more men are unsuccessful at business too.
Prejudice against women shouldn't be allowed, of course, but thinking that women are equivalent to men in abilities or temperament and legislating around it is a losing proposition.
Women are equal to men in the eyes of the law. Women can be firefighters so long as they can beat other candidates (both men and women) in the physical endurance trials.
Dear Elizabeth Moon:
The world does not have one culture. Many do not have the same goals or motivations as yours, some have a different culture, religion, history, sense of self, pride and worth from what you experience in your circles.
I understand how one comes to love one's own culture. It's obvious, really: you make certain choices and it suits you well, the natural conclusion is that if everyone made those choices, they would do as well.
This is wrong, and you should learn to identify the ways in which it is wrong. Hasidic Jews do not try to force their ideas on everyone else, we generally don't allow White Supremacists to force their views on everyone else, and we try not to allow other cultures to terrorize us into following their views.
We are not breaking the law, we are quite happy doing what we do, and we don't need to be forced into things "for our own betterment". You needn't concern yourself about our welfare.
At all.
Feel free to convince everyone in your circle of friends, associates, or community to chip, but please don't try to force your views on everyone, who may have a different opinion.
Signed: Someone with a fucking clue.
Not bad. That's the way to do video.
How will this turn out? Let's see.
Eenie meenie, chili beanie...
1) DEA installs license plate scanners.
2) Police stop vehicles which fit the profile of drug smuggling.
3) Years pass. Many, many innocent people's rights are violated
4) Police find drugs in some stopped car, arrests are made.
5) Plaintiffs complain that police had no right to stop car based on profile
6) ACLU gets involved. Appeal goes to federal court.
7) Federal court overturns conviction on grounds that there was no probable cause (or not - this is Utah, after all)
8) Case is presented to supreme court. Supreme court upholds 4th amendment, license scanning is not probable cause.
End result: Many innocent people have their rights violated, some arrests are made. About a million dollars are spent on one case to bring it to the supreme court, ten years of some person's life is lost fighting it, and eventually the DEA is told to stop. During this time, drug smuggling is reduced by less than one part in a million. Millions of dollars spent on the system are wasted when the system is dismantled.
For once, can we please just cut to the chase? Just stop these idiots from the beginning and a whole lot of people will save a whole lot of effort, money, time, and grief.
Perl's strength is that it's expressive. It's not a language which is easy to learn or which generates heavily optimized code.
In the demo phase, you're not really worried about performance. The goal is to have something showing as quickly as possible, and not worry too much about how fast it runs, or how much memory it takes. Overspec your demo system for the time being (ie - make it really fast and install lots of memory), and once you have a reasonable interface go back and recode it in a simpler language which can be more easily optimized.
Languages which are simple to learn (c++, for example) are generally not very expressive. You end up wasting tons of time debugging issues of memory allocation, library interface details, and datatype conversion.
Languages which are expressive are a little harder to learn, but any individual line in the expressive language does a lot more. Since you are writing fewer lines, and since the fewer lines do more, you end up making programs more easily and in less time.
Yes, the programs will execute a little slower, but as mentioned, this is not important in the demo stage. Your productivity will be much higher.
And there are lots of places where performance simply doesn't matter. Scripts usually fall into this category.
Perl was written by a linguist, not an engineer. As such, it's harder to learn (it's got tons more keywords and context), but once you get the hang of it it's much more expressive. The following single line:
@Lines = sort { $a->{Name} cmp $b->{Name} } @Lines;
unfolds into several lines of C++, plus a subroutine definition with datatype definitions. The following line:
@Files = <c:/Windows/*.exe>;
can be implemented using one of over a dozen possible library calls in C++, but is builtin in perl. You don't have to look up the library call interface specific to your system.
So, to paraphrase: "Let's not protect peoples' rights! It will cost us money! And it will come out of the general fund! WAAAAAAH"
Gimme a break. California will *always* want more money, will always be strapped for cash, and sacrificing morality for expediency is an argument that could be used to avoid all responsibility and fairness.
Balance your budget, reduce your spending, and grow some backbone. Let your people live in privacy and safety.
One aspect of driverless cars that people haven't generally noticed is that the cars don't actually need *people*. This is huge.
Your car could take the kids to soccer practice, and pick them up afterwards. It could go out for an oil change while you're at work.
One idea that I like a lot is sending your car out to get groceries. Order online, and when the order is ready the car drives to the shipping station and helpful baggers (human or robot) place your order into the car, which then drives home.
This would be wildly productive for society. You wouldn't have to spend time shopping or traveling to and from the supermarket, and the supermarket wouldn't need a massive display space within easy drive of the city. The groceries "terminal" could be something more akin to a UPS shipping space.
Other useful increases in productivity are: driverless semi trucks which operate continuously (no need to stop and rest every 8 hours of driving), driverless delivery vans (UPS, USPS, &c), driverless delivery of parts to automotive repair shops and so on.
If a neighborhood could coordinate on times, several families could send a single car to pick up everyone's shopping.
Overall, driverless cars should result in an enormous quantum leap in efficiency, productivity, as well as safety.
Most of the online courses fall short on the psychological aspects of teaching. They are little more than videotaped lectures with automated homework grading, and this model doesn't translate well to an online model.
By way of example, the online courses offered so far have been based on avoiding penalties instead of gathering rewards. Your grade is 100 minus the things you get wrong, and you have to finish before a deadline or get penalized.
This is reflected in the enrollment numbers: 120K students enroll in an online course thinking that MIT (for example) will provide a rewarding experience. 100K drop out because the experience isn't all that great.
Taken another way, consider a student who has trouble in the first half of the course and who gets a poor grade on the midterm. At that point, the maximum grade they can get is very low, so there's really no incentive to continue.
A different model might hold the student back until they show proficiency. Once they have confidence in the material, the system "rewards" them and presents the next chapter. The student is motivated to get the next level of achievement, and their level of understanding is greater.
All of the motivation in all of these courses comes from the student, and with no rewards along the way it turns into a grueling tedious chore. It's tough to keep slogging away for 12 weeks with only the dream of a certificate to keep you going.
If they really want to educate people, they're going to have to change their model to keep students motivated.
Until they do that, it'll still be just videotapes of college lectures.
Something that's escaped all of the online courses is learning through gamification.
In real life, learning is growth - we learn something, it's useful, then we incrementally learn something more useful. There's a reward at every stage.
In online courses, there is no reward - instead of pursuit of goals it's a continuous escape from penalties. It's the exact opposite of what makes a game fun. The MITx "Circuits and Electronics" course is exactly this way: it's a continuous stick instead of a carrot. Get the homework done before the time limit.
Video games are typically a series of tedious, repetitive tasks. They're also structured to give the player a reward for progression - and as a consequence, the player has fun (Everquest comes to mind). Slot machines are the same way: tedious repetitive actions which have no benefit to the player whatsoever - except that the tasp one gets from hitting a minor jackpot is enjoyable enough to be worth the cost.
I would happily pay $100 for an online course structured as a game, something which would teach me something. For example, the "Circuits and Electronics" course could be structured as a bank account (a game score) in which the "player" (student) could accrue money by completing assignments presented by the system. Accrue enough money and the system would unlock the next level of study materials - proceed to the next chapter.
Add some color and the entire journey would be pleasant and rewarding.
Example: A mad scientist wants to get his lightning-moat working, and he believes there's a problem in *this* circuit (shown) where the designer got the transconductance calculation wrong. He offers $20 Mechanicsburg dollars for the right answer. You need $70 more to gain the title "advanced minion".
I would pay $100 for that in a heartbeat.
Invariably the person will not have solved the problem themselves - they're simply repeating an interesting problem that they read about some time in the past. Oftentimes they read that it makes for a good interview question.
You handle this by exclaiming "you like puzzles? That's great! I love puzzles too, here's one for you..." and then give the simplest, least obvious, most vexing conundrum you have. Look this up ahead of time so you have one ready to use.
Let them sputter and hem and haw for a minute, then give them another one. "Or how about this one - it's one of my favourites!"
Depending on how trashed you think the interview is (from when the manager burst in the first time), you can turn the screws a little. If you're not getting the job anyway, you can reverse it so that it seems like you don't *want* the job because no one else in the company can pass *your* puzzle requirements. "Oh, I thought you had a lot of bright, motivated, self-starting individuals. That's what the job requirements said you wanted...".
I keep a Chinese block puzzle in my pocket for just such occasions.
No interviewing manager has ever had the guts to refuse my puzzle after asking their pet puzzle question, and I have yet to find one who was any good at puzzles.
Oh, and I also got a lot of job offers.
Some depressions can be cured immediately and permanently.
Some depression is the result of lack of vitamin D3. Spend most of your time indoors, never go out in the sunshine between 10 AM and 2 PM (the only time when you get vitamin D from sunlight), cover most of your body when you *are* out, and slather your skin with sunscreen at the beach. Oh, and the RDA was set abnormally low when it was first set. Take 8,000 IU of D3 for a week and see if you get better. You can say that it's the dead-end job, more likely it's the job keeping you indoors.
Some depression is the result of lack of iodine. Iodine is almost absent from the modern diet. Salt used in commercial products has none (iodized costs more), and bread whiteners which used to be Iodine are now mostly Bromine. The Japanese get lots of iodine in their diet and have much less incidence of depression. Take some Kelp pills for a week and see if you get better. Or, you can go to a professional and learn to manage the symptoms.
Some depression is the result of lack of Thyroid activity. No one knows what causes this (at the moment), but by some accounts 40% of depression can be cured by taking thyroid supplements. This has to be done with a doctor and lab tests, but thyroid extracts are available over the counter and could be taken for a week - see if it makes you feel better. Or, you can try the prescription "we've got it this time for sure!" antidepressant medicine that's in vogue this year.
Some depression is caused by lack of sleep, which is itself caused by allergies. Get a Xylitol nasal spray and use it every 10 minutes for an hour, or until your sinuses are clear, and see if this helps. Or change your mattress if you're waking up sore or with back pain. Or otherwise change your sleeping arrangements to maximize your rest.
Each of these is cheap and could be considered a $20 experiment - if it works, great! If it doesn't, you're out $20 so no big deal.
The "like a virus remains in your body" is fatalistic reasoning - it's an excuse to give up looking.
Another possible explanation is that Depression is a resource depletion disease, which can be cured by building up stores of that resource.
Nota Bene: There is more than one type of depression. There is more than one cause of depression.
With Iran's penchant for brutal legal sentences ending in death and/or dismemberment, I have to wonder: Is he still alive?
Perhaps he left in easy-to-assemble "kit" form?
Is this what one would call "career suicide"?
Just a thought - does anyone think that China or the Smithsonian will make the scans available to the public?
There's a large number of 3-d printers in the hobby scene. It'd be very neat to be able to download files and print your own replica work of art.
This is one of the biggest reasons for our economic situation.
Amazon pays no UK tax, General Electric pays no US federal tax, and on and on.
By propping up existing companies. governments have been investing in stagnation for the last 20 years. It's reached the point where it's very difficult to start a new company.
Jobs aren't created by existing companies, jobs are created by starting new companies and by small companies growing large.
Yes, GE and Amazon have been job creators, but that was then. Once companies have enough employees to get their job done, hiring essentially stops. Workforce numbers among established companies is, to a large extent, static.
Jobs are created by starting new companies - but how can anyone compete? It's impossible to make a product that competes with a GE product. Even if the new product is better, GE has a lower margin because it pays no taxes.
IP laws (patent issues), intrusive useless regulations, intrusive tax accounting, ambiguous laws with discretionary enforcement set the barrier to entry for starting a business today very high.
A vibrant, healthy economy has lots of churn. Businesses need to adapt or die, and propping up businesses just because they are "established" runs counter to that goal.
It's no wonder that the economy hasn't recovered in 3 years - we don't allow it to change.
I once did a Google image search on the most common 1000 words in English and noted the index of the first porn image in that list.
I was interested to see if there was a way to measure how far any word would have to be taken to indicate porn. For example, I would expect "car" to be distant from porn, but "head" to be fairly close.
To my surprise, using Google images as a metric indicated that all common English words were within 15 images of porn.
This was before they switched to the Javascript image results page, and they may have cleaned up their act a bit, but the results were inescapable - much of the net is centered around porn.
Trekkie had it pegged about right.
Some observations that you might consider:
1) The videos are "after the break". I can scan the text description and move on if I'm not interested. No space is wasted on the front page.
2) The text descriptions refer to the videos, usually with the phrase "in the video after the break", which actually draws me in. I like to see things in action, it gives me a better sense of context and how things work together.
3) Sometimes the description has "awesome video after the break" or some such; as in, "The dizzying video was shot using a pair of key chain cameras that he strapped directly to the rockets before launching. It’s pretty entertaining, so be sure to check it out if you have a few minutes to spare."
4) The videos are for action. Look into movie-making and try to avoid common pitfalls - one of which is putting static information in a video medium. Showing a person talking or expressing an opinion, showing text (especially with the narrator reading the text), or static diagrams with numbers is the wrong use of the media. Video is for action.
(In the case of movie making, the rule is "the actors should *show* the plot, not *explain* the plot".)
Yes, many TED talks are of people talking. These are performances which are action-based, so video is the right medium. Most people aren't public speakers, so they don't have a performance. Video is not a good medium for talking unless it's backed by action.
5) On Hackaday, people complain when the videos show static information. (Usually images of the build process, or overly-dramatic artistic buildups.) Keep the videos short, to the point, and focus on the happenings.
Hackaday is a tech-oriented site which includes videos in many of it's posts. In general, their videos are informative and on-point. They make the browsing experience better.
Let's compare and contrast those videos with the ones here, and see if slashdot can keep the good parts and ditch the bad parts.
Hackaday videos are generated by the people making the articles. IOW, when they make some cool gadget, they have a website describing the build and a video of the device in action. Here's the first example that I could find in a quick search. Lots and lots of other examples.
The subject matter of the cited example is rather uninteresting and techy, and it's amateurish, but the video does an excellent job of counterpointing and illustrating the text of the build.
I've seen other examples where the ideas expressed in the text are badly described or difficult to grasp, but the video makes it clear. There are also many examples of things which are just plain cool when shown as video. Lots and lots of examples.
Images are used to illuminate and express the interest and wonder of a concept, and videos should be used in the same way. Not as a medium in and of itself, but as a way to express those aspects which don't come out well in text or images.
Using them for fake advertizements is the wrong approach - there is simply no general interest in seeing advertizements, and making them into videos doesn't make them more palatable. Having a video of a person talking, expressing an opinion, or describing something is completely backwards - the description should be text, the diagrams in images, and the action in video.
If you had videos in the same vein and for the same reasons as Hackaday, it would be roundly appreciated by just about everyone.
It's like what everyone says is the problem with the RIAA and MPAA - change your business model, give the customers what they want.
We're still your customers, right?
It's simple really... pan the product!
Everyone post their negative experiences with the company, in gory detail.
Even if you've never used the product, some well-placed negative innuendo or skeptical comparison (use this open source alternative instead!) will serve to disadvertize the product.
After awhile, a short while (I'm hoping), the editors will realize that the readers don't want this, the sponsors will realize that they don't want this, and the practice will stop.
People keep moaning about apathy in the face of an unlikeable situation, well here's our chance. Let's change the system.
All together now, one... two... three...
Hey, here's an idea - instead of implementing someone's pet theory-of-the-month, how about we attempt to prove the theory first?
The field of Education is rife with theories - the biggest and worst that comes to mind is the "new math" a few years back. It seems every year or so someone notices that education is failing, comes up with the reason, and a new method of teaching kids "more better" is born.
Why do we let educational institutions try unproven techniques on our children? Techniques that might damage their education and screw them over for the rest of their lives? Isn't unproven teaching techniques as dangerous as unproven medicines?
How about we test these theories before foisting them on our children?
IIRC, Heim theory proposes a type of antigravity effect based on magnetic interactions.
The effect is difficult to test on Earth, because the effect is smaller the closer you get to a gravitational body. I seem to recall an experiment on Earth would require something like 14T to produce a measurable effect.
Maybe we could set up the Heim propulsion using this system and definitively decide whether Heim was correct?
Ah - here is the link. The paper tosses out values of 25T and 60T as needed to do interesting things.
Very cool. Thanks for the link.
Get a cheap timer (cooking timer, tea timer, or similar), and set it for 2 hours.
Every 2 hours when the alarm goes off, get up and stretch. Be sure to stretch all parts of your body - legs, torso, arms, and neck.
Then do something short which is pleasant and provides a bit of exercise - walk around the block, jog a half mile on the treadmill, juggle or practice scales on an instrument for 5 minutes.
Doing this will greatly improve your productivity, health, and mood.